The moon gets _really_ cold, way below spec for most electronics. That's why sensitive parts are sometimes in a heating component, but that also depends on the battery. And yes, cold batteries might not recover properly.
14 days is a long time to keep warm something warm. That's in the realm of a Radioactive decay heater. That might at least keep things warm enough that it can wake up the next day.
Which is powered by Pu-238 - something which is in short supply nowadays, extremely expensive and pretty much inaccessible for a private company like Firefly who built the Blue Ghost lander.
> I don’t see why they didn’t use something that’s not solar
Cost. NASA paid Firefly $101.5M for the Blue-Ghost 1 contract [1]. Just the RTG used on the MSL Mars Lander cost $109M [2] (not counting the R&D costs).
> so they aren’t just littering the moon
Well, right now it is harming no one. They can only be seen by cameras orbiting the moon. If and when humanity starts living on the moon, these landers will go in museums and will no longer be "litter".
The moon is huge compared to a single thing we can currently send there. Comparatively, we are “littering” our own atmosphere a ton more during liftoff.
I can’t help but suspect Starship’s recent run of spectacular explosions might frustrate efforts to launch more nuclear-powered craft like the Voyagers too soon…
